Thirteen Senses by Victor Villaseñor
Just then, Helen came to the table with a huge plate of eggs, pork chops, and potatoes. “Here,” she said, “on the house! Hans says we got to keep your strength up, Sal.” She laughed. “Hans always likes to brag how I almost killed him on our honeymoon. I didn’t know anything. I met Hans when I was thirteen, and we married when I was sixteen, so I had no idea a woman can kill a man!”
The four men laughed. Hans and Helen were different from any couple that Salvador had ever met. They just weren’t married; no, they worked together, too. And he was the boss, there was no doubt about that, but also she was free to voice her opinions about anything. Theirs was the first marriage that Salvador had ever seen where they actually called each other “partners,” as if they were in business together. And Helen was dark. This always puzzled Salvador, because he’d come to assume that all Germans were blond with light skin, like Hans. And Hans, oh, he was a bull! Why, Salvador had once seen Hans come from behind the counter with his huge butcher knife and discipline these big gringo boys who hadn’t finished their food and were being too noisy.
Seeing the three eggs, the two thick, juicy, pork chops, and the big mountains of sliced potatoes, Salvador was suddenly so hungry that his mouth began to salivate. He glanced at Hans behind the counter, waved to him, thanked Helen, then he attacked the food with gusto, as if he hadn’t eaten in years!
Kenny and Archie burst out laughing.
“My God, Sal,” said Kenny, “don’t she feed you?”
“Feed you, my eye,” said Archie. “She never lets him get out of bed!”
Fred Noon joined them, laughing, too.
All three of these men were in their early forties, and they had only the highest regard for Juan Salvador Villaseñor, who, at twenty-five years of age, had managed to carve out a life for himself in a very treacherous, rough-and-tumble world. And they all knew that he’d done it with honor, meaning that he was a man of his word, un hombre de su palabra! A man of respect. And respect had no patience for people who weren’t on their toes. Money didn’t accompany fools for long.
GOING BACK INSIDE their little white cottage, Lupe put on some water to make herself a cup of coffee, and she decided to bathe and wash her hair. It was a warm, sunny day, one of the last days of August, and she could smell the sea coming in with the breeze through their open windows. She could hardly get over the fact that this was really her home, su casa; not her parents’ home, not her sister’s home, but hers, Lupe’s, a married woman’s.
She began to whistle as she went from the kitchen to the bathroom. She felt so happy and safe and all warm and good, deep inside of herself. She could smell the roses from the garden in front. She could hear Chingon chasing one of the cats. These smells, these sounds, they were now the smells and sounds of her home, su casa.
Lupe turned on the water to the tub, testing it with her fingers until it was just right, then she tied up her hair and stripped. She would soak in the tub with her cup of coffee, relaxing for a while before she washed her hair. She could really do anything she wanted. After all, she was now an adult, a responsible person, as Salvador had said. She smiled, feeling so good.
The dog barked.
But no, Lupe didn’t panic. She just simply held still and listened, quickly realizing that it was a happy, playful bark, and decided everything was okay. She wrapped a towel about herself and went into the kitchen to get her cup of coffee so she could start bathing.
Looking out the kitchen window, she saw that Chingon was playing in the front yard with one of the cats like they were best friends. She felt proud of herself that she hadn’t panicked with the dog’s barking. It had been years since all those terrible abuses of war and destruction, but still she was always very alert and ready.
Getting her coffee, she was going back down the hallway to the bathroom when she decided to go back and lock the front door. Yes, she was an adult, a married woman, but also she was ... a child of war.
AFTER SALVADOR FINISHED his breakfast, they all went outside, and Fred Noon excused himself from Kenny and Archie, saying that he needed to speak to his client Salvador privately.
Kenny nodded and said that he’d see them all back at his garage. Archie said that he’d mosey his way through town, take care of a few things here and there, and maybe catch them later.
“Sal,” said Fred Noon as they walked alone over to his Buick, which was parked across the street in front of the Twin Inns Hotel, “I just don’t have the connections up in L.A. like I have down here in San Diego, so these racist sons-of-a-bitches are going to stick your brother with all they can! I’m sorry,” he added, “but I really thought I was going to be able to break their asses, but I wasn’t.”
Salvador nodded. They were standing alongside the statues of the great big white chickens at the entrance to the famous Carlsbad hotel. The truth was that Salvador had half expected this, because the whole deck was stacked against los Mejicanos in this country from the word go.
Ever since he and his family had crossed the border at El Paso, Texas, it had been nothing but war. Not an open war of cannons and guns like it had been in Mexico during the Revolution, but a hidden war of laws and companies twisting everything in favor of the gringo and totally against the Mexicans. But, also, he was finding out that not all gringos were in cahoots with these laws and companies; no, some Anglos were pretty good, fair-minded people.
Salvador now looked up into Fred Noon’s face and said, “Don’t worry, Fred. You’re a good man. You don’t bullshit me or hide, so I’m sure that you did everything you could. I respect you, and so does my family. We will get through this one way or another, don’t you worry.”
“Damnit,” said Fred, “if this don’t beat all! I bring you bad news, and you turn it around, trying to give me comfort. I really love doing work for your people, Sal. I bring news like this to an Anglo client, and he’s all over the place in panic and ends up trying to blame me. You people got guts,” added Fred Noon, “I’ll say that for you!”
Salvador laughed. “Well, what else can we have, Fred, when we’ve been knocked down for so long, that it all looks up to us.”
Fred Noon laughed, his bright blue eyes losing their fierce-looking, hawk-like fire. “I guess you’re right, and maybe this is the real strength of this country, its immigrants, who’ve had it so bad elsewhere that everything here looks good.”
“That, I don’t know about,” said Salvador. “All I know is that nothing is free in this land of the free, especially for us Mejicanos. So, well, we got to take our chances, and sometimes it works and sometimes it don’t.”
Fred moistened his lips, looking at Salvador in the eyes. “I’ll keep you posted, amigo,” he said in Spanish. Fred spoke perfect Spanish. He liked going fishing down to Baja California a lot. “And if I see any break, I’ll call you. Give my best to your bride,” he added, “and say hello to your mother. You got two fine women with you, Salvador, two fine women.”
“I know,” said Salvador. “That was always the plan, ever since mi mama started telling me how to pick a wife, and I was only about four years old. Do you need a couple of bottles, Fred?”
“Sure, I could always use some, Sal. Best damn whiskey in the whole area! And those bastards up in L.A., they had their feet up on their desks, drinking your whiskey, and laughing how they’d done in some chile-belly greasers! Oh, I wanted to get ’em! But Los Angeles is a whole other ballpark from San Diego, especially when the Feds get involved.”
“So what do I tell my mother about Domingo?” asked Salvador. “Two years?”
“No,” said Fred, licking his lips. “I’m sorry, but you better tell her three, four, maybe even five.”
“I see,” said Salvador. This was a tough sentence. Domingo had only been caught with liquor. “Then that son-of-a-bitch from Washington, he’s going to get away with having used barbwire on my brother’s face?” asked Salvador, suddenly getting angry as he remembered how Domingo had been worked over in such a vicious, cowardly way! Salvador would??
Fred Noon nodded. “Yeah, Sal, and I almost had the racist bastard, if I could’ve just convinced the judge that we were talking about a White man. because your brother has blue eyes and red hair.”
“So then if you could’ve convinced the judge that my brother was a White man, it would’ve been against the law for that FBI guy to beat him with the barbwire?” asked Salvador.
“Yeah, that’s right,” said Noon.
“So then to beat White men with barbwire is against the law, but to beat Mexicans like dogs with barbwire while they’re handcuffed and can’t fight back is okay?”
Fred Noon nodded.
“And the darker the Mexican, the more it’s okay?”
Fred Noon shrugged, but then thought a second, licked his lips which had gone very dry, and he nodded again.
Salvador took a deep breath, and then another. He was raging. He didn’t need to hear anymore. He was boiling! White people, oh, they were really protected in this country in or out of jail. But Mexicans, Indians, Blacks, and especially the Chinese, they didn’t count for shit!
“Okay, Fred,” said Salvador, now licking his own lips, too. Rage quickly dried out a body. “So how much do I owe you?”
“Not a damn thing!” said Fred. “Consider it a wedding present from me to you and Lupe. I swear, Sal, I do believe that Lupe must be the most elegant, beautiful young lady I’ve ever laid eyes on, and these two old eyes of mine have taken in a lot of beautiful women!”
Salvador nodded. “Yeah, I think you’re right. But she’s not just beautiful, Fred, she’s quick and smart, too.”
“Does she know about your business?”
“No, not yet.”
“Oh,” said the tall, well-known attorney, arching up his right eyebrow, “this might prove very interesting. Be careful, Sal, that agent Wessely son-of-a-bitch is still in the area.”
“Thank you,” said Salvador, remembering how Fred Noon had found out that this Wessely guy had been a Texas Ranger before joining the FBI. And he’d been taken in and raised by a Mexican family, after his parents had died, then he’d raped their thirteen-year-old daughter. This was when he’d started hating Mexicans. He had snake-eyes, like so many hombres who’d sold their eyes to the Devil, so they wouldn’t have to see who they were or what it was that they’d done.
SALVADOR AND HIS ATTORNEY, Fred Noon, drove their cars down to Kenny’s garage, just down the street on the other side of the railroad tracks. Archie was gone. Salvador went to the back of the garage, where old man Kenny White kept a couple of cases of whiskey hidden for him. He gave Fred Noon six bottles of his finest 12-year-old whiskey.
“Oh, your 12-year-old!” said Noon, grinning ear to ear.
“The best!” said Salvador.
Immediately, Fred Noon opened a bottle and took a swig. “Ah, that’s good!” he said. “Hey, you wouldn’t mind telling me just how much longer it takes you to make this 12-year-old, would you?”
“No way,” said Salvador, “good whiskey is like a good woman, and if you don’t keep the mystery, then the magic is gone.”
“Okay, I’ll buy that,” said Fred. He capped the bottle, put the box with the six bottles of whiskey in his trunk, then he gave Salvador a big abrazo and took off.
Old man Kenny White and Salvador stood there and watched him drive off. Fred Noon was a real man’s man, who lived with honor and eyes open, hiding from no one, especially not from himself. Fred Noon wasn’t one of these educated men who hid behind their professional title, refusing to dirty their hands in the aches and pains of the world.
“So tell me, Sal,” said Kenny as they went back into the garage, “how much longer does it take? And I know it ain’t no twelve years! Shit, you didn’t have any 12-year-old a couple of weeks back, and now you got five cases.”
Salvador only smiled. “See you, Kenny,” he said, changing the subject. “I got to go see a man about a little money.”
“Be careful, Sal!” said the gray-haired old man, laughing. “And don’t forget, it’s about time for me to service that car.”
Al Cappola, the great magician from Italy, had told Salvador very carefully to never let the customers know the secret to fine liquor making. Hell, with a good professional needle, a man could age a barrel of new whiskey into 12-year-old in less than half a day. All you did was put the whiskey in a charcoal-burned oak barrel, insert your long heating needle, and keep the whiskey at a steady temperature just a few degrees below boiling, so it could take on the flavor of the barrel. Then you added a little coloring and brown sugar, but just a pinch, and let the barrel settle for twenty-four more hours, and you then had whiskey as smooth and well-aged as any 12-year-old from Europe.
If the truth be known, this was the way it was done all over the world, Al Cappola had explained to Salvador. And it didn’t matter if it was cognac from France, whiskey from Ireland, scotch from Scotland, or tequila from Mexico, liquor was liquor. No magic. No big secret. And yet it was very important to keep it all a secret, or the magic of the aging process was, indeed, lost. Why, even old Archie, who knew a little about bootlegging himself, was in awe when it came to Salvador’s fine 12-year-old whiskey.
“Look,” Al Cappola told Salvador, “the priest has his tricks for keeping the truth of God all full of mystery, women have their tricks for keeping a man excited for more years than it’s worth, but the greatest magician of all is the fine liquor-maker!”
And it was true. For this big organization outside of Fresno, which controlled most of the West Coast, had brought in Al Cappola from Italy and treated him and his family like he was a king!
Knowledge was power!
IT WAS EARLY YET. Lupe wasn’t expecting him home for about an hour, and so Salvador decided to drive up to San Clemente and collect the money that Carlitos Chico owed him. Carlitos was behind three payments, so no doubt, he, too, like Tomas, figured that Salvador was out of the picture now that he had gotten married. But was Carlitos Chico in for a surprise.
Salvador lit up a cigar, truly enjoying his drive up the coast. Then arriving at Carlitos Chico’s place, a little ranch house just this side of San Clemente—in the big, fertile valley where a lot of farming was done for the Santa Margarita Rancho—Salvador got the idea that he’d just put a scare into this little bastard Carlitos, like he’d done with Tomas. So that once and for all, everyone would stop counting him out just because he was in love and married!
Parking down the hill from Carlitos’s house, Salvador got out of his car, .38 in hand, and came walking up quietly, then suddenly kicked open the front door, yelling, “I’ve come for my money, you son-of-a-bitch!”
And there was Carlitos Chico, meaning “Little Tiny Charles,” or “Chuck” as you’d say in English, naked and down on one knee, making a fire in his little wood-burning stove with a naked woman lying on his bed.
Seeing Salvador come crashing into his home with pistol in hand, Carlitos leaped to his feet like a tiger, yelling, “Mira! Mira! Cabrón! You found me hot and hungry!”
Salvador’s eyes shot huge, staring down at the largest human organ that he’d ever seen hanging on a male human. Some thousand pound horses didn’t have a cock on them like this!
The damn fool little Indio cabrón from Guanajuato now came rushing forward, attacking Salvador with a piece of firewood in hand, and his huge, thick organ swinging from side to side like a third leg between his skinny thighs.
“But I’m armed, you fool!” yelled Salvador. “Don’t you see?”
“I see your gun,” yelled back the naked man, “and I’m going to take it away from you and shove it up your ass! I, too, know how to castrate pigs!”
Well, Salvador was now the one who was in shock and he backed up toward the door as he fired two times into the floor to stop the crazy little Indian—not wanting to kill him, because Carlitos, was, in fact, a good man. A foreman on the Santa Margarita Rancho. A man of respect! But the two
Salvador was experienced, so he ducked, taking the blow with his left shoulder as he stepped in, hitting Carlitos Chico across the side of his skull with the .38 Smith and Wesson.
The man went down hard, and at first Salvador thought that maybe he’d killed him, but he checked his breathing and found that he was all right. What a fool he, Salvador, had been! What had ever possessed him to come charging into a man’s house. Carlitos, damnit, had done the right thing in defending his home.
Then Salvador remembered the naked woman, and he glanced over and realized that she hadn’t made a sound. No, she’d just covered herself with the blankets and now lay there quietly.
He nodded to the woman, put his gun away, finished making the fire, and put on the coffee. Then he hunched down Indian-style, warming his hands to the fire. He waited until Carlitos came around.
“How’s your head?” asked Salvador.
“How do you expect, you son-of-a-bitch!”
The woman came over with a blanket wrapped around herself, and she took Carlitos in her arms, covering his nakedness with her blanket, too.
“You had no right breaking in like that, Salvador! I owe you money, but this isn’t right!”
Salvador nodded. “You’re right. I was wrong. I’m sorry.”
“I’m no two-bit pimp like Tomas,” continued Carlitos. “I’m a foreman! A worker! A man of respect! You come in like that on me, then you got to be prepared to kill me!”
Salvador nodded again, fully realizing that Carlitos was absolutely right, but also, Salvador realized that if they’d been alone, Carlitos would have already accepted his apology. With this woman present, Carlitos had to put on a big show. And he was right to put on this show. After all, no woman wanted a man who wasn’t un hombre de estaca!